JAPAN
Cabinet resigns for reshuffle
Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda sacked five members of his Cabinet yesterday, bowing to opposition demands for ministerial scalps as he sought cross-party support for a crucial tax hike. Noda called on the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) to back a bill that would double sales tax to try to tackle Japan’s debt mountain, currently twice its GDP. Defense minister Naoki Tanaka and transport minister Takeshi Maeda lost their jobs and Noda named Takushoku University professor Satoshi Morimoto as the new defense minister, while the new transport minister will be his party’s chief of upper house affairs, Yuichiro Hata. Noda also sacked agriculture, forestry and fisheries minister Michihiko Kano, whose involvement in a spy scandal with a Chinese diplomat has proved an embarrassment. Justice minister Toshio Ogawa and postal services minister Shozaburo Jimi were also removed.
PAKISTAN
Wedding bus crashes
At least 23 wedding guests, including six children, were killed and 60 injured when a bus plunged into a ravine near Islamabad, police said yesterday. The driver lost control of the vehicle late on Sunday at a sharp bend near Narr village, around 25km east of Islamabad. The bus was carrying 97 people to Chakwal District, 100km south of the capital, after a wedding. The bus was accompanying the bride and groom, who were traveling in a separate vehicle.
MONGOLIA
Former PM’s trial delayed
A court agreed yesterday to delay former president Nambaryn Enkhbayar’s corruption trial after he sought more time to study the case against him. Prosecutors have gathered about 5,000 pages of documents against Enkhbayar, his son Batshugar said in a phone interview from Ulan Bator. Enkhbayar, who was prime minister from 2000 to 2004 and president from 2005 to 2009, argues that the corruption accusations against him are meant to derail his bid to run in parliamentary elections later this month. The charges include privatizing a hotel for his own benefit and misappropriating television equipment donated to a Buddhist monastery. The case was delayed until June 12, Batshugar Enkhbayar said. Mongolia’s electoral commission ruled yesterday that Enkhbayar may not run for parliament, saying that he didn’t have enough education or experience to be a member, according to Batshugar Enkhbayar. His Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Party planned to file an appeal today, his son said.
VIETNAM
War sites opened to US
The government yesterday agreed to open three new sites for excavation by the US to search for troop remains from the Vietnam War, the minister of defense told US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta during a meeting. The announcement came as Panetta and Vietnamese Defense Minister Phuong Quang Thanh exchanged artifacts collected during the war — letters written by a US soldier who was killed that had been kept and used as propaganda and a diary belonging to a Vietnamese soldier. US officials said this is the first time an exchange of war artifacts has occurred. The two defense leaders agreed to return the papers to the families of the deceased soldiers. Vietnamese officials said they would open the three previously restricted sites that the Pentagon believes are critical to locating troops missing in action.
UNITED STATES
‘Truman’ delusions studied
Two psychiatrists in the US have just published a paper called The Truman Show Delusions, in which brothers Joel and Ian Gold describe the cases of five psychiatric patients with experiences similar to the 1998 film, in which Jim Carrey’s character Truman Burbank is the unwitting star of a carefully controlled reality show. Three of the patients referenced the film directly. This is more common than you would think, says Peter Byrne, director of public education at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, who has treated people with such experiences. “Psychosis is a mixture of delusions — beliefs that are false, which arrive without any evidence or logic — but often also hallucinations, usually voices. It is true that some young people, because their experience includes reality TV, which is everywhere, and [CCTV] cameras, which are also everywhere, thanks to [former British prime minister] Tony Blair and co, then hear a commentary about themselves and assume it’s some kind of reality TV show.”
UNITED STATES
Obama signs sick note
When 11-year-old Tyler Sullivan went back to school yesterday, he had the ultimate excuse note for missing class one day last week — written and signed by President Barack Obama. Sullivan played hooky on Friday to see Obama in action during a visit to a Honeywell factory in Golden Valley, Minnesota. When the president finished his speech, the schoolboy took advantage of a chance to meet him. “I was sitting in the front row,” Sullivan told local TV station KARE. “I was pretty excited.” “I had a chance to shake his hand,” the boy said, adding that the president asked him about missing class. Obama then took out an official presidential notepad and jotted down the following, sealed with his signature: “Mr Ackerman — Please excuse Tyler ... He was with me! Barack Obama.” Sullivan said he hoped the note would hold up — and that it would impress his friends.
CANADA
Tuition protests continue
Hundreds of people took to the streets late on Sunday to protest planned university tuition hikes that have riled up residents. Between 200 and 500 demonstrators marched in downtown Montreal in the 41st nightly street protest, banging pots and pans and demanding cancellation of the increases. As before, police have declared the march illegal because no itinerary has been provided, but they watched the event calmly, without making any arrests.
UNITED STATES
Parker plans Obama dinner
Sex and the City star Sarah Jessica Parker is borrowing a tactic from the George Clooney fundraising book, planning a campaign dinner for President Barack Obama and offering a chance to win two tickets with US$3 online donations. Parker, who is married to actor Matthew Broderick, sent an e-mail to supporters and appeared in an advertisement on Sunday’s MTV Movie Awards telling people of the online donations and tickets to the affair at her New York home. “I’m hosting this event on June 14th because there is so much at stake this year and I want to keep doing what I can,” she wrote in the e-mail. “I hope you’ll help me welcome President Obama and the First Lady to New York.” Clooney hosted a dinner last month at his home, where about 150 people paid US$40,000 a ticket to see the president. The event raised nearly US$15 million, with more than half coming from small-amount donors who entered an online ticket raffle by pledging donations of US$3 or more.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not